“Reports that we are withdrawing from the market are inaccurate. We are still insuring adventure playgrounds and continue to cover a number of them across the country. There are also other insurers of adventure playgrounds, and cover can be bought from a number of those providers too.

“We fully agree with and support the concept of allowing children to experience risk in play, but child safety has to remain at the forefront of our decisions when we provide liability cover. We undertook a risk review exercise, as we do with all customers approaching renewal, and concluded that the risks at three adventure playgrounds are too high so have informed the operators that we wouldn’t be renewing their policies.

“These three are out of the total of 26 individual sites which we currently insure, through 17 operating organisations, and not at all like regular children’s playgrounds in local parks. We continue to insure thousands of local playgrounds with slides, swings and see-saws, and other adventure playgrounds which are operated by local authorities. These three particular adventure playgrounds present what we see as high risk of serious and potentially life-changing injury.

“We have now met with Play England and London Play and we would be supportive of some form of initiative in the adventure playground sector. We agree it’s vitally important that children have places to play, learn and develop skills, so we’re keen to work with all concerned and find a way which would help adventure playground operators and other parties like insurers agree minimum safety levels to reduce the chances of serious injuries.”

Joint Statement from Zurich Municipal, Play England and London Play:

“Following a constructive discussion between Zurich Municipal, Play England & London Play, Zurich Municipal has agreed to revisit its decision to not invite insurance renewal for some of their adventure playground customers.

“It was acknowledged and appreciated by Play England & London Play that Zurich Municipal currently insures, and remains committed to supporting adventure playgrounds and play parks across the UK and London. Zurich Municipal will be working with Play England, London Play & other stakeholders to explore the opportunities to establish an adventure playgrounds quality standard.”

Zurich Insurance plc is authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland and authorised and subject to limited regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority. Details about the extent of our authorisation by the Financial Conduct Authority are available from us on request.